New students go mobile

Publish date	2008-08-22
Available Articles	Full articles without membership

A US university says it will be the first school in the country to give iPhones and iPods to all new students.

The 900 students who will start at the private Abilene Christian University in Texas later this year will be given the choice of an iPhone or an iPod Touch which can connect to the internet via wireless networks but does not function as a cellphone.

Students will use the devices to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances - among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed, said ACU chief information officer Kevin Roberts.

He added: “We are not merely providing cutting-edge technology tools to our incoming students. We are also providing the web applications that ensure these tools will become critical to the students’ learning experience. Because 93 per cent of ACU students bring their own computers with them to college, we are choosing to take them to the next level by providing converged mobile devices.”

Dr. Dwayne VanRheenen, ACU provost, said: “This is exciting to me, not only because we’re giving students new tools, but because we are transforming the learning environment.

“The extensive research that’s been done on campus in the past 10 months has prepared us to launch with freshmen this fall, and research will be ongoing as we expand the programme in the future.”

In 2004 Duke University decided to give iPods to all of its first-year students. The move generated a high volume of publicity, but two years later the university scaled back the effort, so that only students in certain courses were given iPods (and then only as a loan rather than a gift).

With the rapid adoption of web 2.0 interactivity, and advances in mobile handheld devices, many more universities now offer students podcasts of lectures for download on their own websites and on iTunes. These include Stanford, Yale and Texas A&M in the US, and Leeds and Glasgow universities in the UK. Many distance learning programmes can also be accessed successfully using PDAs and the likes of the iPhone.

Mobile learning is fast becoming a widely accepted way of learning. A survey by the UK online learning provider SkillSoft revealed that almost two-thirds of professionals said online training via desktop courses or virtual classrooms, and online books and reference materials would become the preferred method of delivering training to employees in the future.

Speed, flexibility and mobility will be key to future workforce development and online learning resources will have an increasingly important role to play.

In addition, independent research conducted on behalf of SkillSoft found that among 5,365 public and private sector employees surveyed, 81 per cent believed they would be receiving the majority of their learning online in the future.

Most of this group expect to be doing so at their desks, while the remainder anticipate that they will be learning online “wherever they happen to be” via their laptop or other devices such as mp3 players. Podcasts, webcasts, online books and online simulations were also expected to grow in usage.

Mark Cotton, a distance learning MBA student at Warwick Business School, has experience of learning in this way.

He said: “The advantages are numerous, but principally flexibility and depth of detail. Because the materials are available online and they’re downloadable you can take them anywhere where there’s a computer, and flexible because the time and place of study is up to you - not governed by lessons or tutor availability.”

Keywords: learning environment, web 2.0, mobile handheld devices, podcasts, workforce development.

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